In Haiti, people take to the streetsPosted: December 9th, 2010 06:14 PM ET
Editor's Note: Since Haiti’s presidential election results were announced Tuesday, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets. No candidate won a majority, forcing a runoff set for January 16th. The election council announced the two candidates who are in the runoff and supporters of the candidate left out have hit the streets in anger. CNN’s Jim Spellman is in Port-au-Prince. Read his first-hand account and scroll through the gallery of photos to find out what's really going on in Haiti right now.
Jim Spellman
CNN All Platform JournalistThe first thing I noticed in the morning was the thick black smoke hanging in the humid tropical air. We soon found the source: dozens, maybe hundreds, of fires set throughout the streets of Port-au-Prince.
The fires set the stage, then came the protesters by the thousands. Most are supporters of Michel Martelly, a popular entertainer turned politician. His supporters lovingly call him Sweet Mickey, his old stage name. The crowds chant "Tet Kale!", Creole for bald-head...a reference to Martelly shaved head.
They march through the streets with no particular place to go. On Wednesday a group burned down the headquarters of the Inite party. Inite is the party of unpopular president Rene Preval whose protégé Jude Celestin beat out Martelly for a spot in a January election.
On the street it goes way beyond simple politics. It is a year’s worth of anger and frustration pouring out. First the earthquake, whose impact is still evident everywhere in Port-au-Prince. Next came Hurricane Tomas, then the cholera outbreak.
Now the people on the street feel they have been cheated out of an election. Their shot at a chance to feel a little hope seems to be gone. For the people in the street of Port-au-Prince it's the one thing they can't afford to lose.
___________________________________________________________Haiti is on edge, after Haiti's election council announced preliminary results in the Nov. 28 election, which even the US Embassy has questioned.
Like others, the Government of the United States is concerned by the Provisional Electoral Council's announcement of preliminary results from the November 28 national elections that are inconsistent with the published results of the National Election Observation Council (CNO), which had more than 5,500 observers and observed the vote count in 1,600 voting centers nationwide, election-day observations by official U.S. observers accredited by the CEP, and vote counts observed around the country by numerous domestic and international observers.
According to the results announced by the CEP, Jude Célestin, Haitian President Preval's anointed successor, will advance to a runoff along with Mirlande Manigat. But this outcome depends on a razor-thin margin in the CEP's tally: only .64 percentage points -- 6,800 votes -- separate Jude Célestin from Michel Martelly.The CNO -- financed by the European Union -- had predicted that Celestin would be eliminated, based on polling voters at 15 percent of polling stations.
But even putting the CNO evidence to the side, 6,800 votes is way too small a margin to have confidence in the outcome, given the widespread allegations of fraud.
This was a disaster foretold. Back in June, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee published a report prepared under the direction of Republican Senator Richard Lugar, the ranking member, calling for Haiti's electoral council to be reformed. But the Obama administration ignored Lugar's report, despite the fact that the US government was paying for the elections, as 45 members of the House pointed out in an October letter.
Why was Sen. Lugar's report ignored? It's hard to escape the conclusion that the overall framework of US policy has been: the right people are in charge, the people that we support, so we can't push them too hard, because that might inadvertently result in the wrong people being in charge.
How did the "right people" get to be in charge in Haiti? The US supported a coup against democratically elected President Jean Bertrand Aristide in 2004. UN troops have been there ever since, maintaining the "order" brought about by the US-supported coup. One of the electoral council's most controversial decisions was to exclude the Fanmi Lavalas party of former President Aristide. Sen. Lugar and 45 members of the House criticized this, but the administration was silent. That represents continuity with the Bush administration's support of the coup against Aristide in 2004.
Opposition in Haiti to the presence of UN troops has crystallized recently with accusations that UN troops were responsible for the outbreak of cholera in Haiti, which has killed at least 2000 people. The UN and others initially dismissed these accusations as unfounded rumor, but now a report by a leading French epidemiologist, selected by the French government to assist Haitian health officials in determining the source of the outbreak, says that UN troops were the likely source of the cholera outbreak.
The flawed election, ignoring warnings about the electoral council, and the lack of honesty about and accountability for the cholera outbreak, suggest it is high time to turn a new page in US relations with Haiti, towards the restoration of full Haitian sovereignty. US officials should support a timetable for the withdrawal of UN troops from Haiti. You can sign a petition to U.S. officials here.
A key obstacle to reforming US policy is that major US media downplay to the point of invisibility the history of US policy. You would have to look hard to find an article in the major establishment media that acknowledges the US role in the 2004 coup, and the continuity of that with present US policy. This is part of a larger pattern of failure by US media to acknowledge the US role in coups in Latin America.
Oliver Stone's documentary South of the Border tried to do something to correct the record. It documented the role of the US in the 2002 coup in Venezuela.
On Friday, December 10 -- Human Rights Day -- people in 20 cities around the US will be hosting screenings of South of the Border. You can check here to see if there is a screening near you.
Here is a clip from South of the Border, in which Scott Wilson, formerly foreign editor of the Washington Post, describes the involvement of the U.S. in the coup in Venezuela:
Follow Robert Naiman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/naiman
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>via: http://communities.canada.com/montrealgazette/blogs/thelens/archive/2010/12/0...
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Haiti Message to the US Embassy in Haiti:
The Will of The People
Pye kout pran devan. I write this note, to pran devan - get ahead - of the international double-speak, outline for the US Embassy the obvious "will of the Haitian people."
*
Those "More schooled in the patterns and privilege of domination" than any local puppet Haiti government rigging elections could ever be.
Pye kout pran devan - the most likely scenario to be played out in these disaster elections
By the time United States policymakers in Haiti are finished playing with Haiti, they will hang Preval out to dry, ignore the process was not inclusive, not fair, not free even before one ballot was cast; ignore that most of the candidates asked for the (s)election to be annulled by midday of the farce, their voters then stopped voting - and go on with their farce. But with Manigat and Martelly. I think that's most likely what they will do.
They've already set it up.Everyone is supposed to forget the cast and un-casted ballots we saw all strewn around; the untold numbers of voters with ID cards unable to vote; those who couldn't find their polling places; video evidence of ballot stuffing and children playing around in the piles of ballots. There’s no unco-opted Haitian voice high enough in the Western power citadels to effectively point out that Haiti’s frustrated young are using the Martelly vehicle to drive their frustration, their discontent somewhere. Even if its over-the-cliff with Martelly in the crumbled palace driving seat. The marginalized, totally disenfranchised have died a thousand deaths. What’s another? Haiti has suffered through two Bush coup d'etats, Clinton's famine, the apocalyptic earthquake, the charity organizations enriching themselves with the earthquake donations, a hurricane, over a million still in tarp camps nearly a year later and imported UN cholera.In our shallow, narcissistic, celebrity-driven globalize pop culture, the novice Martelly is merely a tool to be used by those “more schooled in the patterns of privilege and domination” than any self-serving Haiti politician could ever dream to be. Martelly is the valve that releases accumulated surface pressure while reinforcing the “violent Haitian” narrative. Brilliant US/Euro move. A no brainer. Bottom line, once the US Embassy is done manipulating, its so-called Nov. 28 election will count.I’d really like to be wrong, to believe that Haiti’s beleaguered people will sidestep the UN/US use of Manigat and Martelly to divide the initial block of 12, calling for annulment. That the Haitian people will not play into the hands of the enemy; will have enough strength left to continue demanding for the annulment of this charade even if Martelly is put back in the run-off. That they won’t take Martelly’s re-inclusion as a victory, fall for the ol' okey doke; won’t allow this latest disaster, the disaster elections, to help push through a Haiti Clinton/Oligarchy cohort. Except when fairy tales end, reality steps into view.*This is the how they've set it up to resolve:Quoting a December 7th statement by the U.S. Embassy in Haiti expressing concern over the CEP’s announced result which it said were “inconsistent with the published results of the National Election Observation Council (CNO), which had more than 5,500 observers and observed the vote count in 1,600 voting centers nationwide,’ CNN reported that:The CNO, a European Union-backed local election monitoring group, had said Celestin was running behind the other two candidates.” (See, Anger sweeps Haitian capital despite calls for calm in election unrest By Moni Basu, CNN | December 8, 2010.)Right after the UN reportedly convinced Martelly and Manigat to stop calling for annulment by telling each they were in the lead, I wrote:
"If these farcical elections are not annulled, whoever wins will have no legitimacy, will depend on UN/US to maintain their rule. That means next president of Haiti will accept and legitimize the people's brutal repression, as their rule is dependent on it ."-- Ezili Dantò of HLLN
US Embassy Statement, Wikileaks, US hypocrisy, Imported UN cholera and the Will of the people
The statement by the US Embassy in Haiti on the November 28 election result is gobbledygook, double speak, signifying nothing but avoidance of the truth, duplicity and dishonesty.
In the statement the US embassy also writes that it “stands ready to support efforts to thoroughly review irregularities in support of electoral results that are consistent with the will of the Haitian people expressed in their votes… The United States is committed to the consolidation of democracy in Haiti and calls on the Government of Haiti, the CEP and all political forces to ensure that the will of the people is fully reflected in the outcome of this election.”The US embassy talks as if the whole election process was sound but for some “irregularities; as if the Preval government and the electoral council (CEP) are unbiased and may be counted on to ”ensure that the will of the people is fully reflected in the outcome of this election.”The US Embassy citing "the will of the people" in this statement when that embassy helped finance an election it KNEW would be rigged in favor of Preval's candidate, illustrates their duplicity, dishonesty, and rank hypocrisy. It’s an insult to our intelligence. Wikileaks blew the whistle on president Renee Preval and the 2010 Haiti elections. The partisan CEP has no credibility, nor the US Embassy or that lying Mule(t). They’ve proven their only concern is to undermine the will of the people. By pushing these rigged elections down Haiti’s throats in the name of bringing stability, the international community basically is saying “beggars can’t be choosers.” How can the US Embassy have any legitimacy to say their policies are about the will of the people, the beggars whose national election these foreigners say they paid for and so, for pragmatic purposes, won’t annul no matter that most of the candidates in said very election and most of Haiti is protesting, asking for an annulment? Who determines the will of the people, if not the people? Wikileaks cut the US Embassy’s hypocrisy asunder.The US Embassy in Haiti is only comprehensive to Haitians as a long-standing obstacle blocking the will of Haiti’s people. Allelse is incomprehensible.Elections without an electorate are a sham and therefore without meaning. Haitians are not props to be moved around at the will of the international community. Haiti's masses did not ask the foreigners to spend money on this charade. Nor will Haiti accept from foreigners that this circus they wish to push down our throats is "for our own good" and stability.
Election protest crowd in front of President Preval's house
Haitians know when their will is being circumvented and the foreigners are destabilizing Haiti with these elections, not encouraging stability. Perhaps that’s because the UN troops need instability to justify why its in Haiti and distract the world from the fact that, in its 6-year tenure in Haiti, it has not laid one inch of pipe for clean drinking water, has made over $3billion dollars and fed Haitians 6-years of its raw feces to the point of importing cholera to Haiti.
Imported UN Cholera
Although the often-cited figures of dead cholera victims is just over 2,000 with over 70,000 infected. Those numbers are a gross underestimation. Besides making over $860million this year in Haiti, the UN even got extra money to do so, and has ordered 200,000 body bags for the cholera victims it is anticipating!
These are human beings, flesh and blood. My son, daughter, mother, sister, aunt. Haitians want justice, restitution and liability apportioned, as well as for the over $1.4 billion in the hands of the private charity organizations to provide clean drinking water, or at least if they won't, then to leave Haiti and stop blocking the Haiti Diaspora from organizing to get water treatment centers put in Haiti. But the United Nations is avoiding responsibility in Haiti - it has been there almost 7years and not one inch of pipe has been laid for clean drinking water. Now Haitians are dying from its imported disease. 515 years ago the Tainos on Ayiti died from the discoverers' syphilis and smallpox. Today the indigenous African of Haiti are dying from imported cholera from the "peacekeepers" who know what’s good for us.It's a false argument that the international community can't walk (help treat the cholera victims) and chew gun at the same time (establish the responsibility of the UN and others for bringing a deadly disease to Haiti) . That's just a continuation of the lack of value these foreigners and their supporters place on Haitian life. We see this especially in these elections without an electorate they're pushing down Haiti’s throats, for Haiti’s own good. Just as Haitian dying of cholera deserve justice and restitution, similarly these foreigners, occupying Haiti and reigning over genocide, have made sham elections (disenfranchisement) a Haiti priority before the health of Haiti's people, and the will of the people.The United States, together with Haiti’s so-called international community partners, cannot be trusted “to support efforts to thoroughly review irregularities in support of electoral results that are consistent with the will of the Haitian people expressed in their votes.”Moreover, the US Embassy has absolutely no leg to stand on to opine on “Haiti’s transition to democracy over the past 24 years” when it has orchestrated both the 1991 and 2004 coup d’etats against Haiti’s democratically elected president, thus thoroughly disenfranchising 10 million Blacks and undermined the “will of the people.” President Obama has simply continue the trajectory by appointing George W. Bush and UN occupation force envoy, Bill Clinton, to the Haiti earthquake relief fund. How can the US Embassy or the UN speak about upholding the “will of the people” to determine their destiny through their vote when they’ve put Haiti under legal protectorate with the non-elected, non-Haitian and anti-democratic Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC)? (See, Haiti Elections-HLLN Letter to Edmond Mulet:Goodbye UN! ; Sham Haiti elections complete disaster but US will proceed ; Haiti elections are neither free nor fair; Haiti Elections and UN Cholera ; and Disaster Capitalism in Haiti, New Orleans, Congo & Pakistan.)Haitians are hoarse and empty from screaming our their will. Our lost is bottomless. And these foreigners want the masses not to express that will. Not to demonstrate, not protest, simply roll-over, remain silent as they are being gorged, disemboweled alive with these foreigners’ election bayonet, cholera bayonet, UN occupation bayonet, 16,000NGO bayonet, the IHRC bayonet. Haiti’s is being gang-raped by these bayonets, raped and bloodied silly with no mercy. When Haiti screams, shows the crime is not hers, that she will be heard, will testify and not be ashamed of herself or fear her rapists, the US Embassy in Haiti comes out with its gobbledygook statement, talking about how its policies are to support the will of the people of Haiti and calling on the discredited Preval government, the biased CEP “and all political forces to ensure that the will of the people is fully reflected in the outcome of this election.”The Will of the People of Haiti
Listen US Embassy: it’s the will of the people to annul the November 28 farce, end the UN occupation, prioritize investing Haiti’s life-force and resources and any reconstruction funds in water treatment plants, sanitation treatment plants, sustainable housing, domestic agriculture and manufacturing, public works jobs, indigenous schooling and basic infrastructure. If this had been done in the first place, cholera would not have erupted. Instead, you foreigners prioritized your own interests in Haiti. Discounted the will of the people. Forced upon Haiti as “development” and “for our own good” your elections, your promises of aid that never, ever gets to Haiti, your self-serving US sweatshops, your UN soldiers replacing the traditional role of the bloody Haitian army and policies like privatization.
With all the funding given, water treatment and sanitation infrastructure should have been the first precaution. Now we must also stop the outbreak and clearly get UN accountability as the source of the cholera, get an apology of substance with wrongful death justice and restitution made. That’s the will of the people.Ezili DantòPresident, Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network
Ezili Dantò
Human Rights lawyer Ezili Dantò is dedicated to correcting the media lies and colonial narratives about Haiti. A writer, performance poet and lawyer, Ezili Dantò is founder and president of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network (HLLN). Learn more at the website at: ezilidanto.com. For updates, join theEzili HLLN Listserve.
Sitiyasyon nou vin pi grav
Fanm nan kan yo di, nou konstate depi aprè rezilta eleksyon an sitiyasyon yo vin pi grav kote plis pitit pèp la kontinye ap mouri, administrasyon piblik nan anpil pwovens ap kraze kote ke sa pral mete nou nan rekomanse toutan. Dejouranjou pwoblèm nou menm fanm nan kan yo ap vin pi di, apre reziltaeleksyon you nou resevwa kout woch, kout boutèy, kote ke vye tant nou konn domi yo fin chire pandan yap revandike pou pouvwa, nou menm fanm nou kontinye ap viktim, peyi a bloke, nou pa gen anyen poun bay pitit nou. Kesyon nap poze, èske politisyen sa yo ap goumen pou pouvwa chanje sitiyasyon pèp la oubyen pou yo chanje sitiyasyon poch yo.
Our situation deteriorates
We women in the camps have seen that since the elections results were released our situation has only gotten worse. The children of Haiti continue to die, government offices in many provinces are being torn down and it means we are back in the position of starting over, over and over again. Each day, the struggle of women in the camps gets harder. After the electoral results we feel the blow of every rock that’s thrown, every bottle. The tattered tents we sleep in are torn as they fight for power and we the women continue to be victims. The country has come to a halt. We have nothing to give our children. The question we ask is, are politicians fighting for power to change the situation for the people of Haiti or merely to fill their own pockets?
>via: http://fanmpale.blogspot.com/2010/12/sitiyasyon-nou-vin-pi-grav.html